Around 200 government doctors today boycotted OPD services at various government hospitals here to protest against the murder of a senior family welfare department officer who was shot dead in Lucknow yesterday.

"About 200 government doctors have decided to boycott OPD services on the call of the Provincial Medical Services Association, but they would attend to emergency and post mortem services," Kanpur's Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Ashok Mishra said.

The doctors are protesting the death of Vinod Kumar Arya, district project officer at the family welfare department in Lucknow, who was shot dead by two unknown persons yesterday.

Arya had worked in Kanpur before being transferred to Lucknow last year.

The refusal of the doctors to provide services at OPDs at district hospital, Ursala, K P S Hospital, Dufferin Women's hospital as well as Community Health Centres (CHC) and Primary Health Centres (PHC) led patients, many of them poor and from far flung areas, to go to private clinics.

"The doctors at Kanpur are very upset because Dr Vinod Arya had worked here before going to Lucknow and they were attached to him," Director of Ursala hospital D P Mishra.

A condolence meeting was organised at Ursala hospital to commemorate Dr Arya where doctors came to the hospital but they did not attend OPD, he said.

"However, they tended to the patients already admitted to the hospital and doctors on duty for postmortems were present," Mishra added.